Untouchable
by soverylazy11
Summary: Todoroki has a guardian. Shouto's not exactly sure how no one can see it except for him, or why it's even taking care of him, but it doesn't bother him too much.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own My Hero Academia. Or whatever else is copyrighted. This fanfiction is mine, though.

* * *

"Please stop! He's only five!" His mom is on her knees, and close to tears. Her hands are stretched out, trying to grab Shouto, but his father keeps him out of reach. When his father uses his fire quirk, she flinches and shrinks away. He grabs Shouto's wrist and squeezes it hard enough to hurt.

"He's already five! Don't get in my way!" And then he's dragged away, away from mom and getting closer to some room and he has a feeling that he's going to throw up again.

* * *

The training doesn't stop. It happens every morning and evening, ending only after he is satisfied. His mom starts pulling away, starts becoming more and more distant, and Shouto wonders what he would be like if she wasn't there, and only his father was. After she gets put in a hospital ward and he gets a more striking appearance, he doesn't have to wonder about that. She never comes back to the house.

* * *

A few years later, Endeavor is defeated. Well, not actually defeated. A villain with a water manipulation quirk manages to get the jump on the number two hero, creating a tsunami big enough to douse his flames and make enough steam to blind him, causing countless casualties to bystanders unlucky enough to be caught in the crossfire. Buildings were flooded, civilians were drowning, and some steamed alive. The villain takes an entire town hostage at one point, threatening to summon an even bigger tsunami. Shouto only sees that because All Might's name appears in the news. The number one hero had stepped in and with a well placed punch, manages to blow the water out into the opposite direction, as well as all the steam, and captured the villain.

Endeavor comes home angrier than usual. Calling the training brutal would be a huge understatement. He feels cold, yet melting at the same time and everywhere hurts. His father's angry yells of "How are you supposed to surpass All Might at this rate!" and "You can't become number one if you're this weak" makes his ears ring and his head pound. If there even ever was a time he cared about surpassing the symbol of peace, it definitely wasn't now.

He can't run out of here even if he wanted to, his father's too quick for that and any energy he had was gone dozens of exercises ago. He's lost count. It hurts to breathe and his vision's graying at the edges and blurring even though he's still looking at the fire made from Endeavor's quirk. He eventually loses consciousness though, and when he wakes up, it's three in the morning, and he's still in a puddle of his own sweat, blood, melted ice, and god knows what on the ground. As expected, Endeavor's gone. But what's unexpected was the set of fluffy towels and water bottle put in front of him.

He towels off, even though he's far from being clean, drags himself out of the room, drinks all of the water bottle, drags himself to bed and sleeps it off. He doesn't think too much about the water bottle, despite it never happening before.

* * *

It happens a few more times. He writes it off as his father wanting him to stay alive.

* * *

His father is irritated again, and he probably shouldn't push it, but one offhanded comment led to one comeback that might have dug too deep, and then one thing lead to another and all the emotions from the last few years bubble out and seep into every word he spits out. The yelling match is so loud, Shouto's honestly surprised the neighbors haven't filed a noise complaint before he's dragged by the arm into the training room. The yelling match didn't stop though.

The last thing Shouto recalls is swearing he won't ever use his fire side so he won't be like Mr. Number Two over there, and realizes he pushed it. He blacks out from the resulting "training", stubbornly keeping his fire quirk unused and going down faster than normal.

And when he wakes up, he sees a blurry, unfocused blob of bright green and a cup of water floating in the air. His eyes snap open and his world focuses, but the green floating blob thing doesn't. It moves about, setting the water down near his arms before floating towards the door. Shouto stares at the water like it was part of the green floating thing, even though he knows it most likely wasn't. After a few moments, he decides it's just water and is about to drink it when the green blob thing appears. It is translucent, and takes a vaguely humanoid shape. No matter how much he strains his eyes towards it, all the features and details are vague. It was about as visible as the words on a soaked piece of paper.

Then he realizes he's been staring at it for a while now. It lingers in the doorway, holding a blanket on its side, starting to fade and become more solid, as if it can't decide and is just switching between the two. It's in the middle of fading and becoming more transparent when Shouto spoke.

"What kind of quirk is it?" His voice is hoarse from disuse and kind of quiet, but it's clearly heard in the silent room.

The thing becomes more solid and eventually, he can make out a boy with green hair and what looked like freckles on his cheeks. It's still not quite opaque, not quite real-looking, but it's enough to see what it is. When it walks (hovers?) closer to where he is, he becomes more wary and sits up, ignoring the bruises and burns. It opens its mouth, and makes an clear attempt at talking, moving its lips to form words, but no sound comes out. It tries again, moving its lips and half a word comes out. It looks shocked, and elated, before starting over.

"My name is Midoriya Izuku." His voice is high pitched, young, and loud enough that Shouto freezes. Not literally, but his muscles tense and ache and his eyes go towards the doorway. The corridor remains silent, with no stomps indicating his father heard. He then looks at the thing, no, Midoriya, and raises a shaking hand towards what looks like Midoriya's legs. His body is numb from overuse, but he can't have some villain attempt to kidnap the number two hero's son. Ice crystals start forming, and dart towards Midoriya's feet. He gets up from the ground, ice quirk activated, and is about to advance on the intruder before Midoriya's legs phase through the ice supposedly shackling him to the ground.

"Wha-" "I'm not here to hurt you I swear! I'm not even alive I promise!" The... ghost? blurts out. Shouto's jaw stays open, not finishing his word. His ice quirk deactivates, and after a beat of silence, with Midoriya looking like he wanted to sink into the ground and Shouto trying to process what exactly was going on, Shouto's jaw snaps shut.

"Please explain."


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own My Hero Academia. Why do I always write these.

* * *

When Midoriya first woke up, when he first became like _this_ , he was near the Endeavor Hero Agency. It was a giant looming monstrosity of a building, with reflective red and yellow tinted glass glinting harshly against his eyes. As eye-watering as it was, that wasn't the thing that made him stop in his tracks. It was the body strung all over the tree foliage. Or rather, the remains of it. It felt out of place, the dull, mutilated, mangled... stuff next to lush greenery and sparkling glass.

He didn't want to look at it for any longer than he had to, and quickly turned and walked over to the Endeavor Hero Agency. And while he walked, there was this nagging feeling in the back of his head that something was wrong. The remains strung over in front of a hero agency was most likely enough to warrant it, but he saw enough hero fights gone wrong. The feeling he got when he saw a death, on live television, was like swallowing a pill made of lead, and feeling it sink down, imagining the terrible consequences. This feeling he had, as the doors of the hero agency grew closer and closer, could only be described it as a growing tension in his throat.

Did he kill the body, then pass out? No, he would have remembered who the body was, at least. He didn't even have any weapons. Were both of them attacked, and he was just lucky enough to be knocked out? Or was the body the killer?

Preoccupied with his thoughts, he didn't bother looking at his reflection in the glass. A hero opened the door, and the growing tension seemed to quadruple as he looked up and recognized the hero as Endeavor. With some nervousness and some reverence, he got closer to the intimidating man. And all the carefully constructed words and what he wanted to say rushed out in an unorganized heap.

"Um, Endeavor, hi, uh I saw a dead body in front of your hero agency." He took a breath, shoving his hands behind his back to hide the shaking. "N-not that I did it though. I was just passing by and I-I found it and-" His stammering trailed off, eyes widening as Endeavor walked away, giving no visible reaction to what Midoriya had just said. It was as if he hadn't spoke at all. His hands started fidgeting nervously, and the nagging feeling in the back of his head became louder. He knew something was up, just not what the "something up" was, and he was starting to really dislike it. His legs moved, and before he could think, he was a second away from grabbing Endeavor's wrist.

He froze, just barely long enough for Endeavor to move a step further, and lost his balance. Tipping over, he instinctively grabbed for the closest thing, which was Endeavor. His hand phased through Endeavor's arm and Midoriya fell. Endeavor stopped walking for a few moments, looking around.

"Endeavor, you have to believe me! There's a dead body near your agency, and the killer might still be there! More people could get hurt, Endeavor, you have to listen to me!" Midoriya shouted from his position on the ground in a last-ditch effort.

After dismissing it as nothing, Endeavor continued walking the direction opposite from where the body was, and Midoriya was face-down in the lawn of the Endeavor Hero Agency. Now was not the time to panic. He went through every mundane thing he saw on the ground to calm himself down, and he must have looked like a mess, just lying there and breathing in grass and dirt.

He tried gathering the facts. There was a dead body. He fell near Endeavor, but didn't bump into him nor had the hero noticed his falling. The hero also ignored him, or somehow didn't hear him. If Endeavor did hear him, surely heroes were supposed to rush to the scene, or at least be horrified at the dead body, so close to their agency? His mind reached two conclusions. He either awakened a quirk, or Endeavor chose to ignore him for some reason. But both seemed unlikely. Just what was going on?

He tried his new abilites out.

* * *

He couldn't keep accurately keep track of the time, but judging by the sun, it had to have been at least a few hours before the sound of sirens greeted him. Flashing red and blue lights, the police cruisers sped towards the part where the dead body was. They swarmed around it, marking it off with yellow tape, and using megaphones to tell bystanders within a ten feet that "There's nothing to see here, move along". Which only brought more reporters and bystanders. He couldn't take it anymore. It was hard enough to sort this situation out without the noise from the crowd, sirens, flashing lights, and the eyesore that was the Endeavor Hero agency. And muttering it out felt weird after no one bothered to snap him out of it for ten minutes. Could the trauma of seeing a dead body so close to him... have caused this weird quirk to happen? Was there anyone he wasn't invisible to?

He decided to walk back to where he woke up, somehow managing to get through the crowd of excited reporters and photographers, to right in front of where a policeman stood. He inched backwards closer and closer to the yellow tape barrier, keeping an eye on the policeman. He didn't notice how far he had gone until he had managed to go through the yellow tape. Or, he absentmindedly wondered, was the tape going through him?

Dismissing those thoughts, he focused on answering his questions of what was going on, when he overheard a conversation.

"The body was identified by its school id as Midoriya Izuku."

A startled "What" slipped out, and he tensed, before remembering that he couldn't be heard. He turned to where the conversation was, and tried tapping one of the investigators on the shoulder.

"I- Excuse me, but I am Midoriya Izuku. U-um, I'm pretty sure I am alive, sir." he said.

They never heard him. The investigator continued speaking about the evidence gathered.

"The body looks nothing like me, I'm sure my id card just dropped out, and y-you mistook the person for me." He continued on. The tapping became quicker. The investigator turned around, and met him face to face.

"What is it?"

"Oh, I thought I felt someone tugging my shoulder, but it might just be a bug or because of my coat." The investigator shrugged, and the other one raised an eyebrow.

"Really? A bug? You thought a bug could tug on your shoulder? A ghost is more likely to."

"Ugh, don't say that in a crime scene. Can I continue on with what we found out so far?" The pair walked off, leaving Midoriya standing there, nearly as still as the corpse on the ground.

* * *

That day, at 11:00 pm, Midoriya Inko drove to the crime scene, not wanting to believe the news. She shoved her way to the front of the crowd, not bothering to answer the nosy reporters and journalists, running as close to the taped off area as possible before an officer tried to get in her way, arms held out to keep her from getting further in.

"M'am, please-"

"Where is my son?"

"He most likely isn't-"

"Where is Izuku?" Her voice trembled, and her eyes watered. She cleared her throat.

"Please, I need to know where he is. Do you know where he is?" Her voice broke, and the officers nearby averted their eyes and kept their faces solemn and withdrawn.

"Look, miss, you can't be here." The cop she was facing started to guide her away from the scene, when her composure broke. She ran in, before more officers rushed in to restrain her. She didn't get very far, but it was enough to see a tarp covered body with curly green hair. A limp bloody arm dangled out, clothed with a torn up school uniform.

The air, at that point, felt like it was knocked out of her lungs. She collapsed to the ground, sobbing, screaming, and crying, all while a couple of police officers were trying to subdue her. She heard words along the lines of "You will ruin the investigation." and "Your son will get justice.", but all she could think about was how Izuku, her sweet, caring, innocent little boy, was gone.

 _"Mom, I'm here. Stop crying, please stop, I shouldn't be making you cry this much. I'm alright! See? Just please, please, stop crying."_ He wanted to reach out, to tell her that he was still there, but she couldn't hear him. All he could do was watch as his mom was taken away for questioning.

* * *

 **A/N**

 **When Midoriya found out he was dead that day, one could say... that it killed him inside.**


End file.
